Judges 3:7

CHUSHAN’S OPPRESSION, AND THE DELIVERANCE BY OTHNIEL, Judges 3:7-11.

7. The children of Israel did evil Matrimony strongly influences character. A pagan wife will paganize her husband, especially if that husband be so for backslidden as to trample down so plain a prohibition of such a marriage as is recorded in the book of the law. Deuteronomy 7:3. It did not require a supernatural prescience, but only a knowledge of the human heart, to make the prediction contained in Deuteronomy 7:4: “For they will turn away thy sons from following me, that they may serve other gods.” “In such unequal matches,” says Henry, “there is more reason to fear that the bad will corrupt the good, than to hope that the good will reform the bad.” Hence to all Christians there is an apostolic prohibition, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” 2 Corinthians 6:14.

And forgat… God By long neglect of his service, and absence from his sanctuary and the appointed means of knowledge.

The groves Hebrew, the Asheroth. Our translators have followed the Septuagint in rendering this word, groves. The Vulgate Ashtaroth comes nearer to the Hebrew, which signifies the image-pillars of Asherah, the Sidonian Astarte, the oriental Venus. From the fact that these images were the stumps of trees, several versions have translated the word Asheroth, trees or groves. Bertheau identifies Asheroth with Ashtareth, but supposes that the latter is rather the name of the goddess, while the former refers more specially to the idols erected to her honour. See on Judges 2:13, and 1 Kings 14:15.